Newsmax stood behind noted anti-Semite and fabulist Andy Martin in 2007, when it printed a Martin column baselessly claiming that Barack Obama “locked … away” his white grandmother “in his racist closet.” It does so again in an Oct. 13 article attacking the New York Times for telling the story behind Martin and his serving as the genesis for the debunked claim that Obama’s a secret Muslim:
The Times pinned the blame on this “persistent falsehood” about Obama on an Illinois man named Andy Martin.
In a story headlined “The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama,” the paper said Martin had singlehandedly fomented the claim that “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”
The paper also claimed Martin had past psychiatric illness and had made anti-Semitic statements.
But the Times ignored the allegations by many others that Obama is hiding his upbringing as a Muslim.
But in citing anti-Islam activist Daniel Pipes — who, like Martin, claims that Obama currently is a Muslim (but unlike Martin, Pipes uses the reasoning that children of a Muslim father are automatically Muslim, thus discounting the idea of free will) — Newsmax buys into Martin’s argument. Newsmax tries to parse the issue by focusing on Pipes’ claims about the allegedly Muslim aspects of Obama’s childhood, it glosses over Pipes’ insistence that due to paternal heritage, Obama is now a Muslim.
Is Newsmax so desperate to paint Obama as a Muslim that it defends the indefensible Andy Martin? It appears so.